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Blog Posts: 1 link per 125 words?

I've seen this "1 link per 125 words" for blog posts suggestion pop up a variety of places. I wanted to know if that's "correct" or a best practice? In my posts, I generally write between 800 to 1200 words with about 4 to 6 links in the body of the post. However, (and this may be a problem) I add about 13 links in my closing paragraph, "if you have any legal questions, etc etc, click here for your "Tampa personal injury attorney, Clearwater Personal Injury Attorney, etc etc for all the areas we practice in related to that blog post."

Should I stop doing that? Does that come off as spammy? (The blog is hosted on our site, if that matters for this question at all).

9 Responses

Yes, it looks spammy too and really isn't helpful to users and visitors who are reading the information you are writing and sharing. Don't scare your users away with spammy looking links. It's probably affecting the on page elements as well as constantly reproducing the same (internal or external links) on all these blogs posts. These type of 'footer' links at the bottom of all the posts also look spammy to the engines. If you do keep them there, select only 1-2 that are of importance and rel=nofollow the others. I

My recommendation if to link naturally inside the site and blog. Don't just link to yourself., your products, or your pages. Be bigger than that :) Link to other outside sources as well. Don't be afraid to expand on the type of links you use inside your content. Most people are, but when you link intelligently, and for the benefit of the user, the page's performance, click through, time on page/site, etc will improve. It's a win/win for you and your users experience. Not only will you see in time that you are linking to other really valuable sources for your clients, those sites will be watching who is linking to them, and might garner the attention of the staff there for a natural link mention on their site, or request for a 'quest post'.

Firstly it depends if you are linking out of your site or keeping the linking pointed inwardly. Google recently decided it didn't like press releases and guest postings (which upset a few people!) so don't put all of your guest posts in one basket!

For me I'm of the opinion (or style of content marketing) that blog posts should be about the content not the links (obviously its still good to link to things relevant to the post). You should make a blog post that will want people linking to it.I would say keep links natural looking.

I've seen this "1 link per 125 words" for blog posts suggestion pop up a variety of places. I wanted to know if that's "correct" or a best practice?

Where are you reading this stuff? I wouldn't read that author any more.

In my posts, I generally write between 800 to 1200 words with about 4 to 6 links in the body of the post.

Wow... that sounds like a great way to get a Penguin attack.

However, (and this may be a problem) I add about 13 links in my closing paragraph, "if you have any legal questions, etc etc, click here for your "Tampa personal injury attorney, Clearwater Personal Injury Attorney, etc etc for all the areas we practice in related to that blog post."

Got to agree with EGOL here. As soon as you start boiling articles down to numbers like this you're going to lose. There's no magic formula that will protect you from bad copy.

Ignore the links for a moment. Think about how your blog post is going to help promote you business/service. Is it being posted somewhere your target audience are going to read it? Is it useful/interesting to that audience. What's the one thing above all else that you want the reader to do once they've read the article...

If this is an "on site" blog you should be focused on the message. You should be blogging to educate your readers or present your point-of-view. Link to another page on your site only when needed or when you want to let the reader know that you offer a service (and this should be limited to genuinely relevant links).

Blogging on your own site isn't about generating links to other pages. It is about demonstrating your expertise. The links that you should be after is the ones that people read what you have to say, are impressed by it, and link to it from their own website because what you have said is so important that they want THEIR readers to know about it.

I think people misinterpreted my question. I didn't "start boiling articles down to numbers," I just posted what happens to be the averages for my posts. When I write them, most come out to about 800-1200 to answer the question, and I end up citing about 4 to 5 sources. When I saw a few "1 link/125 word" suggestions, I wanted to see if there was any validity to that and if the numbers that I naturally produce could be a problem...other than the footer links, of course. I now see why that's a problem.

I get why I shouldn't use the footer links anymore, but I don't understand the comment 'sounds like a great way to get a Penguin attack." For my posts, it takes about 800 to 1200 words to answer the topic, and I usually end up citing/linking to 4 outside sources. I don't plan on this framework, but that's basically the average.

Are you saying the posts have too short a word count or there are too many links? Yes, I do understand I should be focusing on content and ux first and foremost, but since you said that in relation to the number I gave, I was wondering if that triggered some red flag I need to know about.

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